The barista at the coffee shop in south London was dressed for Halloween. On her head was a pair of black kitten ears fixed to a headband. On each cheek, she’d drawn three black whiskers that extended from her upper lip.

I ordered my regular: a tall decaf with room for dairy. She took my order, then glanced back.

“Have you just been at a campfire or something?” she asked, trying to be polite.

Apparently, I was stinking up the joint.

“No,” I said. “I’ve just finished my shift at a picket line. I’m in charge of the burn barrel this week. Sorry about the odour.”

“Well, it’s not like it’s a bad smell; it’s just noticeable,” she offered, trying to recover from what she feared was a faux pas.

“Yeah. It’s upsetting for all of us,” I countered, “especially with no movement in sight. It’s such an archaic process.”

Another barista, this one near the espresso machine, chimed in: “Archaic. Yes, that’s a good word for it,” he said, with a hint of disdain. “It’s archaic.”

With that, I took my coffee to my seat, gulped it as quickly as I could, and left, hoping the air conditioning system would take care of any remaining traces of my presence.

Strikes and lockouts, whether they’re long or short, always leave a foul odour. In most workplaces, the lingering effects of labour disruptions dissipate over time, like the smell of cooked cauliflower in a poorly ventilated kitchen. What confounds me is that we still accept strikes, lockouts and other blunt instruments of the post-Industrial Revolution era as legitimate and useful means of solving workplace impasses.

They aren’t and we shouldn’t.

They’re antiquated holdovers from another century. They are neither “part of the democratic process” (as the Wynne government asserted this week) nor inevitable affairs whose “collateral damage” (such as students’ post-secondary education and experience) are inevitable results.

Rather, in our 21st-century context, they are the result of a lack of determination, imagination and inventiveness in a highly competitive global economy that is increasingly driven by all three.

In the case of the latest standoff between Ontario colleges and their faculty, it seems incomprehensible that the negotiators on both sides — which eventually will hammer out an agreement anyway — can be allowed to sleepwalk into a labour disruption that so nonchalantly damages the reputation of the college system, the confidence of its students and the trust of its faculty.

It is bizarre. In nearly every other facet of our social contract with one another, we deem those who settle disputes by inflicting injury or loss on others, however intentional or accidental, to be liable — either criminally or civilly — for their actions. Yet when it comes to labour, Ontarians are expected to tolerate or shrug off such hardship or loss as unfortunate side effects of the pursuit of a labour contract.

This is not to say that the issues at the forefront of the college strike are not important ones. For faculty, they are precarious employment among part-timers and academic freedom. For the colleges, those are the very levers with which they manage the system. For students, it’s a question of whether the administrators and faculty they pay with tuition and tax dollars really have their best interests in mind.

But there’s something else at work here, too. Among the employability skills required of most students, as part of their curriculum, is the ability to manage interpersonal relationships, both one on one and in group settings. As faculty, we expect students to bridge personal differences to achieve the best possible results in both individual and group projects. In fact, we frequently grade them on their success in doing so.

In addition, faculty are adamant that no student may interfere with another student’s education by any means, including personal behaviour, class disruption, bullying, threats, lack of respect or decorum, intimidation or interference.

Among our students, a protracted strike can easily be read as a sign that neither the colleges nor the faculty can walk that talk; that the system is bereft of the creativity, determination and compromise that it expects from its students. And that breeds cynicism. Our students, as well as Ontario taxpayers, deserve better.

The sooner the province can introduce a more creative, contemporary, forward-thinking set of labour laws to replace the archaic system currently in place, the better off we’ll all be.